Emma Kinema

Last updated

Emma Kinema
Emma Kinema headshot 2020.jpg
NationalityAmerican
OccupationLabor organizer
Known for

Emma Kinema is an American labor organizer and the senior campaign lead of CODE-CWA, [1] the Communication Workers of America's Campaign to Organize Digital Employees. In the late 2010s, while working as a quality assurance tester, Kinema volunteered as a games industry organizer and co-founder of Game Workers Unite. She was hired by the CWA union in 2020 to lead their initiative to organize video game and tech workers, the first American initiative of its kind in those sectors.

Contents

As of August 2022, the CODE-CWA campaign has organized over 3000 union members in various sub-industries of the tech sector across over 25 bargaining units in the last two years of organizing. [2]

Career

Emma Kinema's career background in the video game industry has spanned a variety of roles across multiple types and sizes of game companies. She had also been involved in labor organizing since the early 2010s. By the late 2010s, those interests coincided for her as a labor organizer in the games industry. [3] While working full-time as a quality assurance tester for an Orange County, California-based game developer, [4] Kinema became a founding member of Game Workers Unite, [5] a group of volunteers organizing the video games industry. [4] Kinema and games writer Liz Ryerson were the main figures behind the group's initial expansion in early 2018. [6] This volunteering, which she estimated as 60 hours per week, included giving and receiving training and was supported by crowdfunded monthly income. [4] Kinema's interest in organizing was propelled by her first- and secondhand experiences with crunch time (long periods of overtime), toxic workplace culture, and issues related to layoffs, pay gaps, discrimination, health care, and artistic credit attribution. [3] She had previously trained with the Industrial Workers of the World. [4]

External videos
Nuvola apps kaboodle.svg Presentation at XOXO, 2019

Kinema helped to organize a panel on labor at the March 2019 Game Developers' Conference [7] and in May, helped to organize the walkout at Riot Games over its handling of sex discrimination. She assisted Riot workers in creating an organizing committee after they attended a 2018 Game Workers Unite meeting and further advised the organizers via phone. [4] Variety named the Game Workers Unite organizers and Kinema (as the group's most public figure) among the most influential people in video games in 2018. [8]

CODE-CWA

Following two years of discussions, [9] in January 2020, Communications Workers of America hired Kinema to organize workers in the video game and tech industries, [10] the first American union initiative in those sectors. [11] Her initiative with Wes McEnany is named Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE). She plans to use the Communications Workers of America's infrastructure to fight issues including crunch time, layoffs, and workplace ethics, which she has construed as working conditions for employees who choose employers based on their ability to impact society. She also emphasized the slow-moving nature of organizing through one-on-one relationships. [10] CODE organized the New York-based tech company Glitch in March [12] and contracted writers for Voltage Entertainment, whose successful July strike led to pay increases and workplace transparency. [13] In early 2020, Kinema said that she was involved with almost every video game worker unionization drive in the United States. [10] CODE campaigns include both small and large, multinational game companies. [3]

The campaign has unionized multiple companies, including the petition website Change.org, [14] the role-playing game publishing company Paizo, [15] and the indie video game studio Vodeo. [16] CODE-CWA has also assisted Activision Blizzard staff in their organization efforts. [17]

Organizing analysis

In conversation with labor journalist Sarah Jaffe, Kinema highlighted "the socialists and communists behind the CIO and its predecessor organizations" as a great examples of how generating good organizing tactics requires "a political and historical analysis of the state of things, and being able to apply our tactics based off that analysis." This method of analysis is what led her to being involved in organizing the tech industry saying "there's a deep, strategic importance to organizing in technology because our modern tech industry is at the heart of every other industry. You can't have a global logistics infrastructure without the software that enables it. You can't have automated manufacturing on a global scale without the technology that does it. Understanding that structural position of tech, that leverage that comes from the structural position we have, [and] where we exist in the context of the global economy is essential." [18]

Kinema believes that to build unity among the working class, organizers don't win by downplaying social and demographic differences between workers, but instead by diving "fully into those struggles that most center [workers of color, LGBTQ+ workers, and immigrants] and [building] up the organizers who are coming out of those natural fights." [18] When asked about how to organize new industries with little union history, Kinema has said that while organizing smaller groups of workers is an imperfect solution to the big picture of organizing, workers earning any semblance of power is a crucial first step from which the workforce can build on. [19] She has also said that she believes organizing in the tech industry, and organizing the unorganized in general, is essential for improving the labor movement overall. [20]

On the question of companies' efforts to oppose unionization, Kinema has said "[workers are] entering a new phase in organizing... It's not worth fighting the arc of history... this industry will be organized, one way or another." [21] Kinema has described the video game industry's conditions as having the worst characteristics of the tech and media industries. [22] Kinema believes the biggest obstacle to widespread new organizing in tech and games isn't logistics or resources, but instead a question of education, ideology, and changing culture. [23]

Personal life

Her name is a pseudonym chosen so that she could continue working in the games industry without risking dismissal or reprisal under at-will employment. She described undergoing "pretty extreme lengths" to separate her full-time career from her work as an organizer. [24]

Kinema, a queer, trans woman, [25] has spoken about the power of unionization to connect economic rights and social justice. [15] In 2023, Fast Company placed Kinema on their LGBTQ Women and Nonbinary Leaders list for her organizing work. [26]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Video game developer</span> Software developer specializing in the creation of video games

A video game developer is a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large business with employee responsibilities split between individual disciplines, such as programmers, designers, artists, etc. Most game development companies have video game publisher financial and usually marketing support. Self-funded developers are known as independent or indie developers and usually make indie games.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Communications Workers of America</span> North American labor union

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) is the largest communications and media labor union in the United States, representing about 700,000 members in both the private and public sectors. The union has 27 locals in Canada via CWA-SCA Canada representing about 8,000 members. CWA has several affiliated subsidiary labor unions bringing total membership to over 700,000. CWA is headquartered in Washington, DC, and affiliated with the AFL–CIO, the Strategic Organizing Center, the Canadian Labour Congress, and UNI Global Union.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NewsGuild-CWA</span> American labor union, part of the CWA

The NewsGuild-CWA is a labor union founded by newspaper journalists in 1933. In addition to improving wages and working conditions, its constitution says its purpose is to fight for honesty in journalism and the news industry's business practices. The NewsGuild-CWA now represents workers in a wide range of roles including editorial, technology, advertising, and others at newspapers, online publications, magazines, news services, and in broadcast. The current president is Jon Schleuss.

Mapbox is an American provider of custom online maps for websites and applications such as Foursquare, Lonely Planet, the Financial Times, The Weather Channel, Instacart, and Snapchat. Since 2010, it has rapidly expanded the niche of custom maps, as a response to the limited choice offered by map providers such as Google Maps.

Tensions between the multinational technology company Google and its workers escalated in 2018 and 2019 as staff protested company decisions on a censored search engine for China, a military drone artificial intelligence, and internal sexual harassment.

The Tech Workers Coalition is a labor rights group seeking to organize the tech industry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Game Workers Unite</span> Labor rights group for the video game industry

Game Workers Unite is a worker-run, labor rights group seeking to organize the video game industry. Founded during events surrounding the March 2018 Game Developers Conference, the flat organization has grown to over a thousand members across more than 20 international chapters. Its goal is a single union for all games workers, including artists, designers, producers, and programmers. Game Workers Unite has supported actions including Riot Games's 2019 walkout over sex discrimination and social media campaigns against CEOs who executed layoffs. The British chapter of Game Workers Unite is legally recognized as a union within the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain and is working to end crunch overtime practices, improve diversity and inclusion, support targeted workers, and ensure steady and fair wages. Game Workers Unite co-founder Emma Kinema was hired by the Communications Workers of America to organize workers in the high tech and video game industries in early 2020, the first American initiative of its kind in those sectors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amazon worker organization</span> Collective worker action at the American e-commerce company

Some warehouse workers of Amazon, the largest American e-commerce retailer with 750,000 employees, have organized for workplace improvements in light of the company's scrutinized labor practices and stance against unions. Worker actions have included work stoppages and have won concessions including increased pay, safety precautions, and time off. There are unionized Amazon workers in both the United States and Europe.

A tech union is a trade union for tech workers typically employed in high tech or information and communications technology sectors. Due to the evolving nature of technology and work, different government agencies have conflicting definitions for who is a tech worker. Most definitions include computer scientists, people working in IT, telecommunications, media and video gaming. Broader definitions include all workers required for a tech company to operate, including on-site service staff, contractors, and platform economy workers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alphabet Workers Union</span> Trade union of workers

Alphabet Workers Union (AWU), also informally referred to as the Google Union, is an American trade union of workers employed at Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company, with a membership of over 800, in a company with 130,000 employees, not including temps, contractors, and vendors in the United States. It was announced on January 4, 2021 with an initial membership of over 400, after over a year of secret organizing, and the union includes all types of workers at Alphabet, including full-time, temporary, vendors and contractors of all job types.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CODE-CWA</span> Initiative to unionize tech and video game workers

The Campaign to Organize Digital Employees or CODE-CWA is a project launched by the Communications Workers of America to unionize tech and video game workers in January 2020. It sprung out of conversations with Game Workers Unite (GWU) and employed at least two full time staff, including GWU co-founder Emma Kinema and veteran SEIU organizer Wes McEnany. In 2022, Jessica Gonzalez joined, a former Activision Blizzard QA tester.

Trade unions have historically been unrecognized by IBM. Since the company's foundation in 1911, it has not recognized any in the United States, despite efforts by workers to establish them from 1970 onward. In Australia, Germany and Italy, several trade unions have limited recognition from IBM. IBM has been able to minimize membership even in traditional union strongholds in Western Europe.

<i>California Department of Fair Employment and Housing v. Activision Blizzard</i> Ongoing anti-discrimination lawsuit

California Department of Fair Employment and Housing v. Activision Blizzard is a current lawsuit filed by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH), now the Civil Rights Department (CRD) against video game developer Activision Blizzard in July 2021. The lawsuit asserts that management of Activision Blizzard allowed and at times encouraged sexual misconduct towards female employees, that the company maintained a "frat boy" culture, and that the company's hiring and employment practices were discriminatory against women.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Apple and unions</span> Apple Inc. related worker organizations and unions

Apple Inc. workers around the globe have been involved in organizing since the 1990s. Apple worker organizations have been made up of retail, corporate, and outsourced workers. Employees have joined trade unions and formed works councils in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom and the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cher Scarlett</span> American software engineer, writer, labor activist, and corporate whistleblower

Cher Scarlett is an American workers' rights activist, software engineer, and writer. She has organized staff at Apple, Activision Blizzard, and Starbucks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Starbucks unions</span> Unionization efforts at the multinational coffee shop chain

As of June 2023, over 8,000 workers at over 420 Starbucks stores in at least 40 states in the United States have voted to unionize, primarily with Workers United. As of March 2023 none have yet enacted a collective bargaining agreement. This unionization effort started at a store in Buffalo, New York. About a third of Starbucks' Chilean workforce is already unionized, as well as 450 workers in New Zealand and eight stores in Canada. The longest Starbucks strike lasted 64 days, took place in Brookline, Massachusetts in September 2022 and resulted in the unionization of the employees at that location.

ABK Workers Alliance is a group of organized workers from video game company Activision Blizzard. Formed in response to a July 2021 state lawsuit against the company for harassment and discriminatory work practices, the worker advocacy group A Better ABK organized walkouts and demonstrations against the company's policy and practices. The quality assurance workers of subsidiary Raven Software went on strike in December after part of the team was fired. The striking workers announced their union as the Game Workers Alliance in late January 2022 and offered to end the strike pending their union's recognition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Bates</span> American labor organizer

Jennifer Bates is an American labor organizer known for her role in leading Amazon worker organization in Bessemer, Alabama.

Starting in 2022, workers from several Trader Joe's grocery stores have voted on whether to unionize. A store in Hadley, Massachusetts, became the first to unionize and created Trader Joe's United, an independent union unaffiliated with national unions. Stores in Minneapolis, Louisville, and Oakland joined them. Other workers have organized with the United Food and Commercial Workers. Trader Joe's, a chain with over 500 locations and over 50,000 employees, is known for its neighborhood store vibe and over-the-top customer service, which has sometimes clashed with its working conditions. Corporate management has a history of resisting staff unionization efforts. Driven by COVID-19 pandemic working conditions, American service sector organization increased, and Trader Joe's worker concerns over safety, pay, and benefits contributed to their union drive.

Jessica Gonzalez is an American labor organizer working with CODE-CWA, the Communication Workers of America's Campaign to Organize Digital Employees. She is known for her work organizing in the video game industry and founding A Better ABK, the worker advocacy group at Activision Blizzard, and co-founding ABK Workers Alliance, a solidarity union, and Game Workers Alliance, the Raven Software union.

References

  1. ↑ Farokhmanesh, Megan. "Video Gaming Got Its First Major Union. Now What?". Wired. ISSN   1059-1028. Archived from the original on September 1, 2022. Retrieved September 1, 2022.
  2. ↑ "Not Playing Around: QA Testers at Blizzard Albany Organize with CODE-CWA". Strikewave. September 2022. Archived from the original on September 1, 2022. Retrieved September 1, 2022.
  3. 1 2 3 Feldman, Brian (January 31, 2020). "Why Video Game Workers Need a Union: a Q&A with Emma Kinema". Intelligencer . Archived from the original on January 9, 2021. Retrieved January 7, 2021.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Scheiber, Noam (September 1, 2019). "As Grass-Roots Labor Activism Rises, Will Unions Take Advantage?" . The New York Times . Archived from the original on January 6, 2020. Retrieved January 12, 2020.
  5. ↑ Dean, Sam (April 12, 2019). "As video games make billions, the workers behind them say it's time to unionize" . Los Angeles Times . Archived from the original on June 2, 2021. Retrieved May 31, 2021.
  6. ↑ Frank, Allegra (March 21, 2018). "This is the group using GDC to bolster game studio unionization efforts". Polygon . Archived from the original on July 19, 2021. Retrieved January 12, 2020.
  7. ↑ Futter, Michael (March 22, 2019). "What Game Workers Can Learn From Other Labor Organizations". Variety . Archived from the original on September 29, 2019. Retrieved January 12, 2020.
  8. ↑ Winkie, Luke (December 31, 2018). "Most Influential in Video Games 2018: Esports Stars, Union Leaders, Iconic Indies". Variety . Archived from the original on September 28, 2019. Retrieved January 12, 2020.
  9. ↑ D'Anastasio, Cecilia (January 7, 2020). "A Big Union Wants to Make Videogame Workers' Lives More Sane". Wired . ISSN   1059-1028. Archived from the original on April 7, 2020. Retrieved April 12, 2020.
  10. 1 2 3 Hall, Charlie (January 9, 2020). "The effort to unionize the video game industry just got a shot of adrenaline". Polygon . Archived from the original on July 19, 2021. Retrieved January 12, 2020.
  11. ↑ Statt, Nick (January 7, 2020). "A massive telecom union just launched a new campaign to unionize game developers". The Verge . Archived from the original on January 13, 2020. Retrieved January 13, 2020.
  12. ↑ Heater, Brian (March 13, 2020). "Online code collaboration tool Glitch votes to unionize". TechCrunch . Archived from the original on July 19, 2021. Retrieved April 12, 2020.
  13. ↑ Carpenter, Nicole (August 11, 2020). "These game writers made history by going on strike — and winning". Polygon . Archived from the original on August 12, 2020. Retrieved August 12, 2020.
  14. ↑ Allyn, Bobby (June 30, 2021). "Change.org Workers Form a Union, Giving Labor Activists Another Win in Tech". NPR. Archived from the original on July 1, 2021. Retrieved November 25, 2021.
  15. 1 2 Carpenter, Nicole (October 22, 2021). "Pathfinder, Starfinder publisher voluntarily recognizes workers' union". Polygon . Archived from the original on November 27, 2021. Retrieved January 23, 2022.
  16. ↑ Carpenter, Nicole (December 15, 2021). "North America has its first video game union at Vodeo Games". Polygon . Archived from the original on December 22, 2021. Retrieved January 23, 2022.
  17. ↑ Gach, Ethan (December 15, 2021). "Indie Studio Forms First Video Game Union in the Country". Kotaku . Archived from the original on December 22, 2021. Retrieved January 23, 2022.
  18. 1 2 "Opinion | Can the US Labor Movement Rise Again?". Common Dreams. Archived from the original on October 20, 2022. Retrieved October 20, 2022.
  19. ↑ Farokhmanesh, Megan. "Video Gaming Got Its First Major Union. Now What?". Wired. ISSN   1059-1028. Archived from the original on September 1, 2022. Retrieved September 1, 2022.
  20. ↑ "Not Playing Around: QA Testers at Blizzard Albany Organize with CODE-CWA". Strikewave. September 2022. Archived from the original on September 1, 2022. Retrieved September 1, 2022.
  21. ↑ Farokhmanesh, Megan. "Video Gaming Got Its First Major Union. Now What?". Wired. ISSN   1059-1028. Archived from the original on September 1, 2022. Retrieved September 1, 2022.
  22. ↑ Farokhmanesh, Megan. "Video Gaming Got Its First Major Union. Now What?". Wired. ISSN   1059-1028. Archived from the original on September 1, 2022. Retrieved September 1, 2022.
  23. ↑ "A small studio has become the first video game company to unionize in North America". NPR.org. Archived from the original on September 1, 2022. Retrieved September 1, 2022.
  24. ↑ Milner, David (December 21, 2018). "Game Workers Unite: The Fight To Unionize The Video Game Industry". Game Informer . Archived from the original on January 12, 2020. Retrieved January 11, 2020.
  25. ↑ Hayes, Ryan (April 1, 2020). "Level Up". Our Times: Canada's Independent Labour Magazine. Archived from the original on November 25, 2021. Retrieved January 23, 2022.
  26. ↑ Herbst, Julia (June 18, 2023). "Presenting Fast Company's fourth annual list of LGBTQ women and nonbinary leaders". Fast Company. Archived from the original on August 14, 2023. Retrieved August 14, 2023.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.